Saturday, 10 October 2015

I’m going to
start telling you not to keep to yourself so much, but before I go too much
further, I want to clarify something.I
will not be propagating a lifestyle of being nosey and gossiping.I do, however, want to encourage a lifestyle
of paying attention to the lives of others:looking at what they choose to display to the public and caring enough
to give them advice on how to improve their lives.

I love
living in Canada.It’s a peaceful
nation, where everyone usually tries to get along with everyone else.It has a positive atmosphere that other
countries envy.Tolerance is a pretty
big deal here, and that’s great.But it
does has its downsides.

Along with
the acceptance of others comes an almost self-righteous pride in our ability to
embrace our differences.What follows is
often the attitude that our aptitude to co-exist peacefully with others
entitles us to a certain level of freedom to do what we want without judgement
ourselves.So although we live in an age
where we are constantly connected to others via technology, our fear of
offending others gets in the way of forming honest relationships.

But our
proclivity to keep our opinions of others to ourselves does more than hamper
our ability to build quality relationships.It also means we are less likely to learn from our own and others’
mistakes.People aren’t as willing to
step in and tell someone when they are being unwise because that would seem to
be judgmental or intolerant.That leads
to more mistakes being made overall, meaning that our peaceful society isn’t
anywhere close to perfect.

Something
that stuck with me from all the different kinds of safety courses I’ve been
forced to take is that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of reaction.It might be annoying to tell someone that
they are going down the wrong path.After all, we peace loving people would never want to offend someone
else.But in the long run it would mean
less mistakes being made.

I want to
promote a loving society.What is more
loving:keeping to ourselves and not
offending anyone, or stepping into the lives of others and offering them advice
because we care about them?

I want to
reiterate that I don’t mean for us to become busybodies always sticking our
noses in other people’s business and telling them what we think of then and
what we think they should do.Yet in our
lives we have the privilege of building relationships, and we can speak into
others’ lives within the right contexts for the right reasons more than we
thought.

Sometimes
not minding our own business means just being there as a friend.There has been countless times where a random
friend just saying hello out of the blue to me was a great encouragement.Often the people who are the hardest to get
along with are the ones that most need a friend.

That about
sums up what I wanted to say.I did want
to add though that the motivation for this article came with the devastating
news of a local suicide.It was the
second suicide within the family, which made the news even more heart breaking.Although I did not personally know the
involved individuals, I did know people who have committed suicide, and I would
do anything to go back and talk to them.

For those of us who are Christians, there is
extra motivation for us to not be content just living secluded but peaceful
lives.Every day there are people who
not only are in danger of going to Hell, but also in danger of living apart
from the unending joy that comes from Jesus.We have a responsibility to speak into each other’s lives, and not just
with our actions (especially since being a kind a loving person may just be
mistaken as attributed to being a friendly Canadian).Pray for the wisdom to do so in the right
ways at the right times.